**Acer Nitro 7 Review: A Budget Gaming Laptop with Some Compromises**

The Acer Nitro 7 is a budget gaming laptop that aims to deliver high-performance gaming at an affordable price. Our review finds that this laptop has some compromises, but it still offers a great gaming experience.

**Display and Performance**

One of the standout features of the Acer Nitro 7 is its 15.6-inch Full HD display with a 90Hz refresh rate. This makes for a smooth gaming experience, especially in games like Overwatch or Rainbow Six Siege, which appear noticeably smoother on this laptop compared to others. The panel itself has good color accuracy and brightness, making it suitable for everyday use.

However, the performance of the laptop's processor is where things get a bit mixed. Our i5 processor was very well-behaved, turboing up to around four gigahertz settling in at three gigahertz on all four cores. This is above base clock, but not significantly so. However, our i7 model was actually pretty disappointing when we put it under an all-core load. The thermals were fine, but the processor immediately ran into a power limit and settled in below its base clock at 2.4 gigahertz. This means that while the i5 is a good option for most users, the i7 struggles with performance, particularly when running demanding loads.

**Chassis and Build Quality**

The Acer Nitro 7's chassis is made of metal, which gives it a solid feel. However, the laptop's weight is a bit on the heavy side, making it less portable than some other options in this price range. The keyboard is also a bit heavy-handed with keystrokes, lacking tactility that some users may find annoying.

The trackpad is another area where Acer can improve. While it uses the Windows Precision Drivers, the chassis flex around the trackpad makes the clicks feel a bit mushy. This is an area where we expect more improvement from Acer in future models.

**Speakers and Webcam**

One of the highlights of the Acer Nitro 7 is its speakers, which are surprisingly loud and have a nice full sound. This is a significant improvement over some other budget gaming laptops, which often skimp on speaker quality.

The webcam is also noteworthy, with Acer claiming it has "super high dynamic range". While we wouldn't exactly describe it as "super", it's still a decent effort from Acer. However, the real star of the show is the screen's 90Hz refresh rate and its ability to deliver smooth gaming performance.

**Battery Life**

The 55-watt-hour battery found in the Nitro 7 is about what you'd expect in this price range. It can last around eight hours if you're just surfing the web, but falls short of seven hours when using more power-hungry applications like gaming or video editing.

**Upgradeability and Maintenance**

One area where the Acer Nitro 7 really shines is its upgradeability. With easy access to RAM, two M.2 drive slots, and space for a 2.5-inch drive, users can easily expand their storage and memory as needed. This makes the laptop very future-proof and allows users to avoid spending money on new hardware upgrades in the future.

**Verdict**

The Acer Nitro 7 is a great budget gaming laptop that offers excellent performance at an affordable price. While it has some compromises, such as the i7 model's struggles with performance and power delivery, these are largely mitigated by its 90Hz display and smooth gaming experience. The laptop also has great upgradeability and maintenance options, making it a solid choice for users who want to future-proof their device.

**Recommendation**

If you're looking for a budget gaming laptop with a good balance of performance and price, the Acer Nitro 7 is definitely worth considering. Our review unit came in at $830, which is a great value given its performance and features. However, if you can afford to spend more, the i5 model is also available, offering better performance at a lower price point.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 7 is a solid budget gaming laptop that offers excellent performance, a smooth display, and easy upgradeability. While it has some compromises, such as the i7 model's struggles with power delivery, these are largely mitigated by its other features. If you're looking for a good balance of performance and price, the Nitro 7 is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou could point at almost any major category in tech these days tvs phones computers and you could make the argument that the pace of technological advancement has slowed and they've gotten boring but here's one that's really exciting sub 1 000 gaming laptops these days compared to even models from a couple of years ago are amazing and the new generation of nvidia graphics cards is a big part of the reason so the gtx 1650 mobile gpu is actually priced the same as the outgoing 1050 ti but it's got a fair bit more power under the hood so if you're a cheap gamer or even just someone who cares about getting good value for your dollar we think you should give the acer nitro 7 and especially the nitro 5 a really good look so let's talk about what they did right and what they left out to keep these budget beasts affordable the look of the nitro 5 is a bit divisive although the overall feel of the machine is pretty good and i appreciate the much smaller bezels the red accents on the keyboard and the track pad along with loads of plastic make the nitro 5 look a bit toy like it's better endowed cousin the nitro 7 improves on this a bit with a slightly more premium screen backing and less red but it still falls into the trap of looking like something that a high schooler might think looks pretty dope on both models you'll find heaps of i o they've got four usb ports including one type c along with headphones full size hdmi and ethernet which you thankfully won't need too often since unlike the zephyrus ga502 the 2019 nitro lineup includes two by two wi-fi cards by default of course those are minor details and after that intro what everyone wants to know is what kind of performance we can squeeze out of an 800 laptop well good news the gtx 1650 put on a really good show easily doling out 60 fps at 1080p in every game we tried without sacrificing too much eye candy compared to the gtx 1050 ti we're actually looking at about a 20 improvement across the board now that's not enough to make for a completely different experience from last gen but it is definitely noticeable so games that previously were best played on medium settings can now comfortably be set to high those frames don't matter though if there isn't a good display panel to show them on and at first it seemed like the nitro 7 was going to come away with an easy win here its 8-bit panel is brighter has richer colors and maybe even higher contrast than the 6-bit panel found on the nitro 5. but it turns out the nitro 5 has an aseptic sleeve when we tried overclocking the display panels using custom resolution utility the nitro 7 tapped out where most laptops do slightly above 60 hertz the nitro 5 on the other hand just kept going and going all the way up to a whopping 90 hertz now i don't want to guarantee that your nitro 5 will be able to display that many frames per second this is way beyond the official spec and acer could be sourcing panels from multiple vendors but on ours games like overwatch or rainbow six siege appear noticeably smoother for a tangible competitive advantage now if you've got a mixed workload that includes some hobbyist level photo or video editing the nitro 7 would still be a better bet but if you primarily plan on gaming in our mind the nitro 5 is the clear choice here above the screens you'll find a webcam which acer brand says super high dynamic range it looks a little something like this i wouldn't exactly describe it as super but hey at least they've got one zing asus uh what's more impressive though is the speakers which got pretty loud and have a nice full sound you know that's another thing that has really improved a lot on budget gaming laptops right dell had really good ones a while ago and they got worse okay well back to performance if you do plan on using either of these for content creation or professional purposes the internal displays on either of them might not be perfect for that but there's always the option of hooking up to an external one for color critical work so we checked it out the i5 processor in our nitro 5 was very well behaved it turboed up to about four gigahertz settling in at three gigahertz on all four cores that is well above base clock but the i7 model was actually pretty disappointing when we put it under an all core load the thermals were fine but it immediately ran up against a power limit and settled in below its base clock at 2.4 gigahertz when hit with a demanding load now thanks to its two extra course and its higher boost it's still the better processor out of the two but if we're going to call out apple for under building their machines then acer needs to expect the same treatment silver lining at least this lack of adequate power delivery means that neither laptop gets exceptionally loud under load both laptops are equipped with the same keyboard and it's fine just like it was two years ago but in light of recent competition we think that acer needs to seriously think about upgrading their keyboards across the entire lineup it's still not terrible but the keystrokes are a bit on the heavy side with very little in the way of tactility so if you're able to justify the price jump to a zephyrus g502 or an alienware m15 your fingers will thank you when you're writing long emails about why you couldn't finish your assignment because you were busy gaming as for the trackpad it's also fine fortunately acer is using the windows precision drivers but the chassis flex around the track pad makes the clicks feel a bit mushy again an area where i'll accept it today especially at this price point but acer needs to consider improving it for next year the 55 watt hour battery found in the nitro 5 and 7 is about what you'd expect in this price range and since the components aren't too power hungry and actually the screens on both are a bit on the dim side you can actually use the nitro 5 away from the wall for close to eight hours if you're just surfing the web with the nitro 7 coming in closer to seven both laptops feature great upgradeability with easy access to ram two m.2 drive slots and space for a two and a half inch drive so we love this because it means you don't have to sweat it when you don't have a ton of money today so you select an 8 gig ram 128 gig storage option hoping that you'll have more money when you finish your program and you can expand it later so then with that in mind should you actually buy either of these laptops well the 830 dollar price tag on the nitro 5 is really hard to complain about and if you want a game on a budget the 90 hertz display overclock will give you a surprisingly good experience if you get a golden unit like ours so that one is coming out of this review with a full-blown recommendation as for the nitro 7 although the panel is better it's a tougher sell given that the i7 model struggles with performance crippling power issues now it's possible that everything else at this price point will have the same problems so i'm going to end up saying well pick your poison but i kind of doubt it and we're going to know for certain soon enough when dell sends over their new g3 so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below also down there is our merch store which finally has the stealth hoodie this one that i'm wearing right now and our community forum which you should totally joinyou could point at almost any major category in tech these days tvs phones computers and you could make the argument that the pace of technological advancement has slowed and they've gotten boring but here's one that's really exciting sub 1 000 gaming laptops these days compared to even models from a couple of years ago are amazing and the new generation of nvidia graphics cards is a big part of the reason so the gtx 1650 mobile gpu is actually priced the same as the outgoing 1050 ti but it's got a fair bit more power under the hood so if you're a cheap gamer or even just someone who cares about getting good value for your dollar we think you should give the acer nitro 7 and especially the nitro 5 a really good look so let's talk about what they did right and what they left out to keep these budget beasts affordable the look of the nitro 5 is a bit divisive although the overall feel of the machine is pretty good and i appreciate the much smaller bezels the red accents on the keyboard and the track pad along with loads of plastic make the nitro 5 look a bit toy like it's better endowed cousin the nitro 7 improves on this a bit with a slightly more premium screen backing and less red but it still falls into the trap of looking like something that a high schooler might think looks pretty dope on both models you'll find heaps of i o they've got four usb ports including one type c along with headphones full size hdmi and ethernet which you thankfully won't need too often since unlike the zephyrus ga502 the 2019 nitro lineup includes two by two wi-fi cards by default of course those are minor details and after that intro what everyone wants to know is what kind of performance we can squeeze out of an 800 laptop well good news the gtx 1650 put on a really good show easily doling out 60 fps at 1080p in every game we tried without sacrificing too much eye candy compared to the gtx 1050 ti we're actually looking at about a 20 improvement across the board now that's not enough to make for a completely different experience from last gen but it is definitely noticeable so games that previously were best played on medium settings can now comfortably be set to high those frames don't matter though if there isn't a good display panel to show them on and at first it seemed like the nitro 7 was going to come away with an easy win here its 8-bit panel is brighter has richer colors and maybe even higher contrast than the 6-bit panel found on the nitro 5. but it turns out the nitro 5 has an aseptic sleeve when we tried overclocking the display panels using custom resolution utility the nitro 7 tapped out where most laptops do slightly above 60 hertz the nitro 5 on the other hand just kept going and going all the way up to a whopping 90 hertz now i don't want to guarantee that your nitro 5 will be able to display that many frames per second this is way beyond the official spec and acer could be sourcing panels from multiple vendors but on ours games like overwatch or rainbow six siege appear noticeably smoother for a tangible competitive advantage now if you've got a mixed workload that includes some hobbyist level photo or video editing the nitro 7 would still be a better bet but if you primarily plan on gaming in our mind the nitro 5 is the clear choice here above the screens you'll find a webcam which acer brand says super high dynamic range it looks a little something like this i wouldn't exactly describe it as super but hey at least they've got one zing asus uh what's more impressive though is the speakers which got pretty loud and have a nice full sound you know that's another thing that has really improved a lot on budget gaming laptops right dell had really good ones a while ago and they got worse okay well back to performance if you do plan on using either of these for content creation or professional purposes the internal displays on either of them might not be perfect for that but there's always the option of hooking up to an external one for color critical work so we checked it out the i5 processor in our nitro 5 was very well behaved it turboed up to about four gigahertz settling in at three gigahertz on all four cores that is well above base clock but the i7 model was actually pretty disappointing when we put it under an all core load the thermals were fine but it immediately ran up against a power limit and settled in below its base clock at 2.4 gigahertz when hit with a demanding load now thanks to its two extra course and its higher boost it's still the better processor out of the two but if we're going to call out apple for under building their machines then acer needs to expect the same treatment silver lining at least this lack of adequate power delivery means that neither laptop gets exceptionally loud under load both laptops are equipped with the same keyboard and it's fine just like it was two years ago but in light of recent competition we think that acer needs to seriously think about upgrading their keyboards across the entire lineup it's still not terrible but the keystrokes are a bit on the heavy side with very little in the way of tactility so if you're able to justify the price jump to a zephyrus g502 or an alienware m15 your fingers will thank you when you're writing long emails about why you couldn't finish your assignment because you were busy gaming as for the trackpad it's also fine fortunately acer is using the windows precision drivers but the chassis flex around the track pad makes the clicks feel a bit mushy again an area where i'll accept it today especially at this price point but acer needs to consider improving it for next year the 55 watt hour battery found in the nitro 5 and 7 is about what you'd expect in this price range and since the components aren't too power hungry and actually the screens on both are a bit on the dim side you can actually use the nitro 5 away from the wall for close to eight hours if you're just surfing the web with the nitro 7 coming in closer to seven both laptops feature great upgradeability with easy access to ram two m.2 drive slots and space for a two and a half inch drive so we love this because it means you don't have to sweat it when you don't have a ton of money today so you select an 8 gig ram 128 gig storage option hoping that you'll have more money when you finish your program and you can expand it later so then with that in mind should you actually buy either of these laptops well the 830 dollar price tag on the nitro 5 is really hard to complain about and if you want a game on a budget the 90 hertz display overclock will give you a surprisingly good experience if you get a golden unit like ours so that one is coming out of this review with a full-blown recommendation as for the nitro 7 although the panel is better it's a tougher sell given that the i7 model struggles with performance crippling power issues now it's possible that everything else at this price point will have the same problems so i'm going to end up saying well pick your poison but i kind of doubt it and we're going to know for certain soon enough when dell sends over their new g3 so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below also down there is our merch store which finally has the stealth hoodie this one that i'm wearing right now and our community forum which you should totally join\n"